Adrenaline pumped through Luke, before he realised that the ghostly figure wasn’t making any aggressive moves. Luke recalled how strong the ghoul captain had been at only level sixteen. The dwarf in front of him was even higher. If the spirit attacked, he was dead.

“Are you not going to introduce yourself, son? You’ve made more of a mess than the Draugsvär,” The spirit said. In his ears, Luke heard the words in an alien tongue. It was reminiscent of the grinding of rocks. However, in his mind the exotic speech was translated into English, with a subtle Scottish accent.

Are all dwarves Scottish? Luke wondered. “Umm, I’m Luke,” he replied.

“Well Luke, it’s been a long time since anyone used this forge, besides myself. Though that shield needs some serious work. Your hammer on the other hand… the craftsmanship there is breathtaking. The quality of the steel alone is impressive. I can hardly feel any slag in it, or any refining concepts infused within. Obviously you didn’t make it, but I would love to meet the smith that did. My name is Rurik, and I am the spirit of the forge. I extend to you a vow of hospitality,” Rurik said with deep sincerity.

“I accept? Does that mean you won’t try to kill me?”

“Of course I won’t, not unless you try to kill me first. You’re not a thrice-cursed undead.” The forgemaster spat, which sizzled on the floor for a moment, before disappearing.

“Are you not a ghost?” Luke asked, confused, before flinching. This was the second powerful entity he had encountered, and the second time he messed it up.

“Really? The dreamspace must have anchored somewhere truly provincial this time. I’m an aspect, a concept made manifest, not a bloody ghost.” Rurik said as he shook his head.

The dwarf paused for a second, before continuing to speak with a solemn tone. “My people, the Eldrinsvär, spent a lot of time here cultivating the myriad paths of the Forge. Over the years they imprinted the surrounding aether with fragments of their souls, which created me. This place was sacred to my people. Maybe tidy up after yourself a bit next time?”

It was true that Luke’s little work out had left the forge looking like a gym after new year’s day. With a touch of chagrin Luke started putting things back where he found them, to the best of his recollection.

Rurik seemed to approve and left Luke to it. The man hummed to himself and walked over to the broken window. As the dwarf stood there a ball of fire formed in his hand, and began to spin like a basketball.

“So you’re like the Ferryman?” Luke asked nervously once he had finished moving everything back to where he found it. Even from the other side of the forge he could feel the heat contained within the little ball of fire.

“Only in the loosest sense. I'm a small fish compared to that old bag of bones. I’m a local spirit, stuck here until the forge falls down, or this entire cursed dreamspace collapses. If I could take the Draugsvär with me, I would collapse it myself,” the spirit explained.

“I see,” Luke said, minding his words. He guessed that the flame-bearded spirit was the reason so few undead approached this area of the city. “I apologise if I have caused any offence. My world is new to the omniverse.”

“Oh dear, my commiserations. Give me five minutes to study that hammer of yours, and I’ll answer what I can, though I doubt it will make much difference. Hopefully, your overlord will be gentle with what remains of your people,” the spirit consoled.

“What do you mean?” Luke’s voice came out strained.

“Well, If your world has only just formed a nexus within the Veil, then you have some rough years ahead. On the outer rim, virgin worlds are hotly contested resources. They are rich in concepts, and unaspected aether,” Rurik replied.

“I see,” Luke said. He had always been a bit of a hobby historian and one particular chapter in human history came to mind: the age of colonisation.

“Speaking of novel concepts, this system of yours is almost as interesting as the craftsmanship of your hammer. Is the Saurian framework of cultivation prevalent in your world?” Rurik asked.

“What?”

“The levels, and division of heavenly attributes into Mind, Body and Spirit?”

“Umm, no. That’s more a video game kind of thing.” Luke said.

“Your people make a game of cultivation? Fascinating… Your overlord will be most pleased I imagine, with a concept like that you might end up with a more hands-off overlord. Some Tyrants only care about the flow of aether and concepts. It all depends which factions decide to bid,” Rurik said.

“Bid? You mean they’re going to buy our whole fucking planet?” Luke said.

“Not quite, son. The local powers will bid to join in the grand game. To the victor goes the spoils. These things have rules, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Luke said. Keeping his tone calm was difficult, but he wanted to keep the dwarf talking.

As luck would have it, Rurik was more than happy to ramble on, particularly when Luke lent him the hammer. Luke got the impression that the aspect was lonely. From this conversation, Luke learnt a lot about the omniverse at large, the Imperial Throne that ruled most of it, and the Veil. It was a mixed bag.

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The so-called civilised factions of the omniverse were in a near constant state of sanctioned war, and fighting over newly awakened planets was just one facet of that. The silver lining Luke took from this state of affairs was that the invaders would spend as much of their time and effort fighting each other as they would fighting humanity.

On top of that, the rules Rurik mentioned were reasonably likely to limit collateral damage, and prevent any faction from just nuking Earth from orbit.

“So, we could rule ourselves if we win? And then everyone would have to leave us alone for the next decade?” Luke said, checking he had understood the gist of what Rurik was saying.

“Yes, but that’s not likely. It would be like a child killing their parents with a wooden spoon. The last faction that won their own conquest games dominated the sector for centuries.”

“Who was that?”

“The orcs. Took to the Veil like they were born in it. They were natural-born psions down to the last screaming brat. They slaughtered their invading forces, exploded outwards into the Veil, and decimated their would-be conquerors. Three hundred years later their empire imploded when their Tyrant died. Since then they mostly live in the Veil as pirates and bandits, apparently. My information is second hand and probably centuries out of date though. Time tends to flow differently in the Deep.”

Luke took the time to question the friendly spirit for a few more minutes, but the deluge of information overwhelmed him. The omniverse was a harsh place, even if it was filled with wonders that defied belief.

At one point, the forgemaster offhandedly mentioned a cosmic forge which was literally an entire star, and beasts the size of planets.

The conversation also allowed Luke to put together a rough history of the dungeon itself. Thousands of years ago the world Rurik’s people lived on had been thrown into strife by bickering factions in the imperial core. Their planet had been an inhospitable hellhole, but was home to a unique metal the Eldrinsvär cultivated. This made it a target of the Eternal Legion, but the imperial throne refused to sanction a conquest.

With war forbidden the Legion turned to espionage, and corrupted one of the poorer clans. This clan tainted their bloodline and devolved into the Draugsvär. The city of Lundheim had been in the middle of fighting a civil rebellion, when an aetherstorm cut it loose from reality, and into the Veil.

Untethered from reality, the city had been twisted into a facsimile of itself. When it wasn’t anchored, the dungeon drifted through the uninhabited region of the Veil known as the Deep. Luke latched onto the mention that time passed differently there. If time moved faster inside the dungeon, that easily explained how an average guy like Luke was keeping up with the forerunners of humanity.

Rurik couldn’t confirm or deny this theory. From his perspective time was linear. The dungeon would take about ten years to fill with aether from the Deep, before gravitating to a new world. On the outside, sometimes days had passed, but sometimes it had been centuries. At each stop, the city’s identity would erode just a little bit more, as it took on characteristics of the worlds it visited, such as the system itself.

Talk about the system and cultivation was illuminating, even if Luke didn’t understand most of what Rurik was talking about. What Luke did grasp, was that as far as the aspect could tell, the system had been designed to streamline the process of a mortal becoming a psion. Apparently this was where most sentient life failed. It was the first great bottleneck.

This first step involved condensing several concepts into a single unified ‘path’. Gaia’s training system called this a class, but it was basically the same thing. This made Luke even more eager to remove his concept of [Undeath]. If he didn’t do so before unlocking his class, it might get locked in forever, even if he avoided hitting gold rank. The system hadn’t mentioned that was a possibility.

However, Rurik finally tired of talking and decided making a decent shield was a bigger priority than Luke's identity crisis.

“You’re not going to turn into a zombie anytime soon, son. Go grab some of those planks, and one of those aeldrin ingots you were throwing around earlier. Then we can fix you up with a proper shield.”

Though frustrated by the aspect’s dismissal of his concerns, Luke wasn’t going to turn down free loot. The dwarf’s fiery beard crackled with anticipation as Luke first gathered the materials as instructed. With a nod of approval, Rurik beckoned Luke closer to the heart of the forge and directed him to lay out the materials on a sturdy workbench. A soft orange glow illuminated the space.

“First things first,” Rurik began, his voice taking on the practised tone of a teacher. “A shield is not just a piece of wood you hide behind. It is important to conceptualise what you’re trying to create. That’s why your door has a useless rot domain, when the vast majority of proper shields are [Bulwark] aspected. ”

The forgemaster selected a thick, sturdy plank that to Luke’s eyes was no different from the rest. “This will be the core of your shield, a nice sturdy base to build from. We’re going to reinforce it with metal bands around the edges, and stretch wurm rawhide over the face. We’ll finish it with a round, metal boss in the centre. That way it can take a hit without splintering and give a good bash to an enemy.”

Luke listened intently. Not only did the forgemaster talk about the process and techniques to make the shield itself, but he waxed philosophical about the purpose of the design, and how to weave aether into it as imprinted concepts. Everything was very deliberate. As with many things with the system, and aether in general, a lot of it came down to intent.

Under the aspect’s guidance he learned to activate some of the machines inside the forge and used them to trim and laminate the wooden planks to the perfect shape and size. The final result took the form of a sturdy flat topped kite shield, with a curved face to turn aside blows.

[Eldrinsvär Shield - Uncommon - A simple but effective shield with the Bulwark Domain.]

[Concept ranked up: Bulwark - Bronze. Awarded for crafting an uncommon shield. +3 Endurance, augments shields and armour, You shall not pass.]

Luke spent a minute or two trying it out. The forgemaster corrected his form a little, but otherwise had little advice. Rurik’s path was that of a crafter. On the rare occasions he fought off undead from his forge, he relied on the pure heat of his [Fire] concept to scorch them to ashes.

There was no reason for Luke to hold on to his old shield, so he put it up on the marketplace. The listings had only grown a little, with a few miscellaneous items on offer. Nothing much caught his attention, except that Jonas had placed another [Eve’s Apple] on the market, this time at a ten percent markup from his previous price.

Luke’s stomach rumbled.

It looked like he was going to have to hunt for his dinner, or go hungry.

What is there to eat in a city full of undead?